Slugger's daughter makes her case public

Ted Williams in March, 1958

HERNANDO, Florida (CNN) -- Saying she is on a mission to "save Ted Williams," the daughter of the baseball legend enlisted the public's help Wednesday to try to stop her half-brother from freezing Williams' corpse.

"I need anyone and everyone, famous or not, if they have knowledge about my daddy's wishes to be cremated, to stand up and be heard," said Bobby-Jo Ferrell, Williams' daughter with his first wife.

Ferrell has been battling John Henry Williams, the only son of the Boston Red Sox great, since he had their father's body removed from a Florida funeral home last Friday and placed in a cryonics lab in Arizona.

Ferrell said she had known of her half-brother's plans for a year, but "kept it to myself in the prayerful hope, it wouldn't come to fruition."

She said she and her husband had told "John Henry that if he carried out this insane plan, and went against daddy's final wishes to be cremated, there would be no choice left but to go to the press for help."

"It is unfortunate that I have been put into a corner to fight for what is right and for my father's final wishes. I too am on a final mission -- to 'Save Ted Williams,'" Ferrell said.

John Henry Williams

She issued her statement through the news media -- a group of professionals the baseball great dubbed "the gutless knights of the keyboard."

"I find it ironic, in more than one way, that the very entity -- 'the press' -- which daddy thought was against him, is now the very tool which may help save him," Ferrell said.

Williams' daughter claims her father wanted his body cremated and his ashes spread in the Florida Keys, where he loved to fish. She has said her half-brother wants to sell their father's DNA so there can be "lots of little Ted Williamses running around."

John Henry Williams has not commented on the matter.

Williams, one of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball and the last player with a season batting average above .400, died last Friday at age 83.